College of Behavioral & Social Sciences
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations..
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Item Winter Soldiers and Moonlight Rebels(2024) Cowan, Michael; Reed, William; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)How do rebel groups cultivate devotion? Civil conflict scholars have found that when rebel groups fill their ranks with ideologically committed soldiers they are able to operate more effectively in several ways. However, the mechanisms by which rebel groups attain such devoted followers remains unexplained. I propose that insurgencies are able to cultivate devotion when they successfully deploy an ideology that balances between explanatory power and complexity. An ideology that manages to make sense of a political environment with minimal complexity provides adherents with certainty, which is a source of substantial utility. Groups that deploy maximally potent ideologies foster the emergence of a "hard core" of soldiers who depend upon the certainty afforded by the ideology and will therefore go to great lengths to act on its behalf. I articulate a theory of ideological potency and propose an associated function that expresses how much utility an individual will derive from that ideology via its certainty mechanism. I then analyze and compare the PIRA, the Viet Minh and Renamo insurgencies to demonstrate how variation in the extent to which they effectively balanced between explanatory power and complexity in their ideologies can explain variation in their capacity to attract, generate, control, and sustain devoted soldiers.Item African Americans and Appomattox Manor Within the Structured Landscape of the Eppes Plantation(2000) Brown, Gail W; Shackel, Paul A.; Orr, David; Blades, BrookeThe Civil War brought about many changes in Virginian society, including the area around City Point, Virginia. These changes greatly effected the manner in which plantation owners managed their farms. Plantation owners had to find new ways of obtaining and exploiting their labor, and protecting their resources. The goal of this report is to explore those changes between the years 1851 and 1872 on the Eppes' plantations. I examine how Dr. Eppes structured his landscape to aid in controlling his productive resources, and the relationship he held with African-Americans. Part of exploring that relationship will be examining the living conditions of African-Americans on the Eppes' plantations as slaves and freedmen laborers. Dr. Eppes' home, Appomattox Manor, and its grounds now make up the City Point Unit of the Petersburg National Battlefield. This report will place the City Point Unit into its larger historic context. Though the unit is best known as the location of General Grant's headquarters during the Siege of Petersburg, its history is far more extensive. In this report, I place City Point and Appomattox Manor in the plantation context which surrounded them before and after the war. It will show how the Civil War was not an isolated event, but was effected by and affected the social world around it.Item Membership Diversity and Tactical Adaptation within Violent Non-State Organizations(2018) Dunford, Eric Thomas; Birnir, Johanna K; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines why some violent non-state organizations experiment with and develop a broader repertoire of tactics and targets to achieve their political goals while other groups consistently utilize the same methods across their lifespan. Social movement theory argues that challengers to the state's authority should continually innovate their repertoires of contention to mobilize support and sustain an effective challenge against the state; however, rebel groups vary markedly in the size of the tactical repertoires that they employ in their campaign to alter the status quo. Some non-state organizations are more capable of experimenting with and implementing new variations on existing methods than others. I explore the factors that shape a militant organization's ``adaptive capacity.'' Specifically, these are the conditions that make an organization more or less capable of the incremental innovations necessary for expanding its set of violent repertoires and generating a larger tactical menu from which it can draw when selecting a strategy to challenge the state. The project first delves into how measure tactical adaptation, employing a text as data pipeline to classify and numerically compare descriptions of violent events. It then argues develops a theory of membership diversity as an internal driver of tactical adaptation. The theory emphasizes the stochastic elements that underpin membership interactions, arguing that individuals bring with them prior knowledge and experience when joining an organization and that knowledge diversity in an organization positively impacts an organization's adaptive capacity. The argument establishes two distinct mechanisms that focus on the endogeneity inherent to how solution concepts emerge and members learn in an organization. The project directs the analytical focus on \textit{who} is in a violent organization and argues that the answer to this question can shape (a) the ultimate outcome of a civil conflict, (b) how analysts assess the military capabilities of an armed group, (c) other arenas for innovation, such as rebel governance or institution building, and (d) the underlying severity of the conflict. the theoretical framework advanced here atomizes the individual and thinks carefully about the information he or she possesses and how such information can operate contagiously in a closed system. Moreover, the theory generates a framework whereby individual-level interactions and outcomes contribute to larger organization-level outcomes that we observe. The theory reduces the concept of diversity down to its most basic element: information. This allows one to think about the impact of membership diversity more formally and to treat it as another resource that a violent organization has available to it.Item BIOPHYSIOLOGICAL PREDICTORS OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES, AGGRESSION, AND VIOLENCE(2017) Sawyer, Katherine Michelle; Reed, William L; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation consists of three essays examining the development of aggressive and violent political attitudes and actions. The first paper examines the relationship between genetic variation, volumetric changes in the ventral diencephalon, and aggressive attitudes towards outgroup members. Results from a mediation analysis demonstrate the role of brain development in the formation of hostile political attitudes. The second paper uses a formal model to explore the matching of potentially politically violent persons with organizations engaged in ongoing armed conflict. The final paper presents and tests a biological model of political violence. Results from a Candidate Gene Analysis demonstrate the inciting role of political repression in persons with proclivities towards aggression and violence.Item The Implementation of Peace Agreements Following Civil Wars and Post-Conflict Outcomes(2016) Cil, Deniz; Huth, Paul; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While previous studies show that conflict is less likely to recur if implementation of an agreement is successful, little work has focused on identifying the factors that lead to successful implementation. In other words, following a negotiated settlement of a civil war, what causes warring parties to fulfill their promises of implementing reforms in different issue areas instead of reneging or returning to violence? Similarly, why are some peace agreements fully implemented while others are only partially or never implemented? Additionally, while successful implementation is a necessary condition for durable peace, not all partial or failed implementation cases lead to conflict recurrence. Therefore, a subsequent question raises, why do some partial and failed implementation processes lead to conflict recurrence while others do not? This dissertation addresses these questions in a two-step process. In the first part, this dissertation identifies the conditions under which state- and non-state actors would be more inclined to fulfill or evade their responsibilities deriving from particular agreements. The second part focuses at variation in the degree of implementation and its effect on post-conflict outcomes, mainly conflict recurrence. Building upon the bargaining theory of war, this dissertation argues that bargaining between parties does not stop once an agreement is signed. The implementation of an agreement is a continuation of the bargaining process in which both sides try to get the maximum amount of concessions they can while updating their beliefs on the gains and losses to be made by staying in the peace process or abandoning it. Therefore, the negotiation and implementation stage should both be taken into account to fully understand successful transitions to peace, and the incentive of parties to continue implementation. The main argument is that as long as the costs of non-compliance remain high, both parties will continue implementation. Both sides, but especially non-state actors, should retain their military capability to enforce the implementation of the agreement and credibly threaten renewed violence in the wake of failed implementation. A series of statistical models using original dataset on the implementation of peace agreements provides support for this theory.Item CIVIL WAR SETTLEMENTS AND COMBATANTS’ BEHAVIORS: STRATEGY, PERCEPTION, AND REPUTATION(2015) Chang, Kiyoung; Huth, Paul; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Three projects in my dissertation focus on the termination of internal conflicts based on three critical factors: a combatant’s bargaining strategy, perceptions of relative capabilities, and reputation for toughness. My dissertation aims to provide the relevant theoretical framework to understand war termination beyond the simple two-party bargaining context. The first project focuses on the government’s strategic use of peace agreements. The first project suggests that peace can also be designed strategically to create a better bargain in the near future by changing the current power balance, and thus the timing and nature of peace is not solely a function of overcoming current barriers to successful bargaining. As long as the government has no overwhelming capability to defeat all rebel groups simultaneously, it needs to keep multiple rebel groups as divided as possible. This strategic partial peace helps to deter multiple rebel groups from collaborating in the battlefield and increases the chances of victory against non-signatories. The second project deals with combatants’ perceptions of relative capabilities. While bargaining theories of war suggest that war ends when combatants share a similar perception about their relative capabilities, combatants’ perceptions about relative capabilities are not often homogeneous. While focusing on information problems, this paper examines when a rebel group underestimates the government’s supremacy in relative capabilities and how this heterogeneous perception about the power gap influences negotiated settlements. The third project deals with the tension between different types of reputations in the context of civil wars: 1) a reputation for resolve and 2) a reputation for keeping human rights standards. In the context of civil wars, the use of indiscriminate violence by the government is costly, and as such, it signals the government’s toughness (or resolve) to rebel groups. I argue that the rebels are more likely to accept the government’s offer when the government recently engaged in indiscriminate violence against civilians during the conflict. This effect, however, is conditional on the government’s international human rights reputation; suggesting that rebel groups interpret this violence as a signal particularly when the government does not have a penchant for attacking civilians in general.Item MAKING SENSE OF THE FORT; CIVICALLY-ENGAGED SENSORY ARCHAEOLOGY AT FORT WARD AND DEFENSES OF WASHINGTON(2015) Minkoff, Mary Furlong; Shackel, Paul A; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I ask the question, what is the best way to understand the history and archaeology of The Fort and other African American communities associated with the Defenses of Washington? The Fort is an African American community that settled on the grounds of Fort Ward in Alexandria, Virginia from the 1860s through the early 1960s. To answer this question, I adopted a civically-engaged, sensory approach to archaeology and established three project goals. First, I use sensory archaeology, historical research, and community memories to explore the origins of The Fort community, its relationship to Fort Ward, and the land surrounding it. Second, I incorporate the archaeology, memory, and history of The Fort community into a broader narrative of the local and national past through shared sensory experiences. Third, I conclude by describing how a sensory approach could be used to understand the experiences of African Americans at other Civil War Defenses of Washington sites. These goals have been developed with the consideration and input from The Fort Ward/Seminary African American Descendant Society (Descendant Society) and the National Park Service (NPS).Item THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR: A NEW INSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATION OF THE SOCIAL ORDER AND MILITARY FACTIONS DURING THE SECOND REPUBLIC (1931-1939)(2014) La Parra Perez, Alvaro; Wallis, John J; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation presents a new view that emphasizes the role of intra-elite fights in understanding the failure to consolidate democracy during the Second Spanish Republic. The two traditional explanations have emphasized the action of "blocks" and often reflect the ideological tensions behind the interpretation of the Second Republic. Rather than seeing elites as blocks or focusing on ideological divisions, my view focuses on the heterogeneity of interests within elites and how the redistribution of political and economic rents during the Republic relates to the support or animosity of elite factions vis-à-vis the republican government. I apply my view to one specific Spanish elite -the Army- showing that, contrary to traditional interpretations, the military was a non-monolithic organization that was divided into different factions with conflicting interests. I explore the impact that factional military interests had on officers' chosen side (rebel or loyal) during the Spanish Civil War that ended the Republic. The econometric analysis uses a new data set that identifies officers' sides and uses information from military yearbooks to follow officers' individual histories between 1910 and 1936. The results confirm that the Army was a non-monolithic organization where factions behaved differently and responded to the impact from republican military reforms. Officers in favored corps and those that enjoyed greater promotions between 1931 and 1936 were more likely to support the republican regime. I also explore the effect of hierarchy on officers' choice. Results show that subordinates tended to follow the side chosen by their senior officers.Item Foreign Military Interventions in Civil Conflicts, 1946-2002(2014) Eralp Wolak, Pelin; Wilkenfeld, Jonathan; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Empirical evidence shows that foreign military interventions in civil conflicts on the side of the government or opposition are frequent and they have significant political and economic impacts on both the intervening states and the target states. While many recent quantitative studies have examined the impact of foreign military interventions on the dynamics and outcomes of civil conflicts, similar attention has not been paid to the factors that motivate foreign powers to intervene in intrastate disputes. Most of the theoretical insight on the causes of military intervention comes from earlier qualitative studies that analyze the foreign policy decision making of interveners in detail. In contrast, the small amount of quantitative research conducted on this topic focuses more on the attributes of the civil conflict that attract foreign military intervention. The purpose of this study is to analyze the causes of military interventions from a foreign policy decision making perspective which has been neglected in current quantitative studies. In order to identify the factors that motivate state leaders to use military intervention as a foreign policy instrument, this dissertation examines the international and domestic sources of foreign policy decision making through a modified realist framework. Hypotheses are tested against a novel dataset that includes both actual and potential interveners in all civil conflicts between 1946 and 2002. Sub-sample analyses are also conducted for major powers, democracies and autocracies to understand the relative importance of international, domestic and contextual factors on the intervention decisions of different types of states. The empirical findings show that the strategic significance of the conflict state, interventions by rivals or allies, and domestic considerations of leaders play a more critical role than the attributes of the civil conflict when foreign powers are deciding whether and on whose side to intervene in a civil conflict. While these empirical findings provide an improved understanding of the rationale behind foreign military interventions in civil conflicts, this dissertation also contributes theoretically to the current literature by bringing back the much needed foreign policy decision making perspective into the study of interventions.Item Leader Incentives and the Termination of Civil War(2013) Prorok, Alyssa; Huth, Paul; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the influence of leaders' incentives on civil conflict termination and outcome. Building upon principal-agent framework and insights from credible commitment theories of civil war, I argue that culpable leaders - those viewed as responsible for the war by their constituencies and opponents - are more likely to be punished following poor war performance than non-culpable leaders, who can more easily avoid responsibility for the war. As a result, culpable leaders will have incentives to `gamble for resurrection', extending a losing war in the hope of turning the tide, achieving victory, and avoiding punishment. The culpable leader's incentive to gamble for resurrection thus influences the dynamics of war termination, making wars less likely to end when culpable leaders are in power. Culpability is also hypothesized to increase the likelihood of extreme war outcomes - total defeat or major victory - and to decrease the likelihood that the leader makes concessions to end the war. These propositions are tested using both quantitative and qualitative evidence. First, using an original dataset of rebel and state leaders of a global random sample of civil wars between 1980 and 2010, I test the influence of leader culpability on civil war termination and outcome. The results provide strong support for my theoretical expectations; culpability decreases the likelihood of conflict termination and concessions, while increasing the likelihood of extreme war outcomes. Additionally, I test the mechanism underlying the theoretical argument using quantitative and qualitative evidence. Original data on each leader's culpability, war performance, and post-tenure fate demonstrate that culpable leaders are, in fact, more likely to be punished following poor war performance than their non-culpable counterparts. Within-case comparative analysis of settlement attempts during the civil war in Angola provides additional support for the theoretical argument, demonstrating that leader vulnerability to punishment played a critical role in undermining settlement attempts in Angola during the 1980s and 1990s.